When users enter a search term into a search engine, the resulting search hits are often presented in a particular order. This is the case with virtually all search engines available on the web. Upon receiving this response from the search engine, the user can then peruse the results at will, beginning either with the first listed search result or proceeding to one lower on the list.
The search results are presented in a certain order for different reasons. First, the markup languages commonly used for presenting web-oriented information are more geared toward presenting information in a structured way (e.g., as a list of items having a top and a bottom) than in an unstructured way (e.g., as an unsorted group of items). Second, the results may be deliberately placed in a certain order according to the relevance of each individual hit. This may generally be referred to as ranking the search results, because they are placed in an order decided by an algorithm or by some other predefined decision process. For example, when the Google™ search engine presents the results from a search, it ranks the responsive pages according to backlinks; that is, according to the number of other web pages that link to the page in question. Thus, the ranking is performed by taking into account other information that the search engine can access (the number of backlinks) and that is relevant in deciding which of the web pages represented by the search result the user may be most interested in reviewing.
Another feature that helps the user facing many search hits is the approach of presenting snippet information together with some or all of the search hits. Generally speaking, the snippet information is a portion of (usually textual) content from the corresponding web page. This information is automatically retrieved and displayed in the search results together with the title of the web page, or otherwise in connection with a link that can be used for accessing the web page. The snippet information is presented because it may help the user decide whether the page is relevant without having to open the page (which may take some time). Thus, the snippet information is generated using other information that the search engine can access (content of the web page) and that is relevant in deciding which of the web pages represented by the search result the user may be most interested in reviewing.
Individuals sometimes create information collections online that reflect their interests. For example, some approaches have been made to let users clip content from web pages and store this information for later use. The benefit of this is that the user can gather, in a single place, information from several sources that relate to a common topic, yet that may not be available from those sources in the future (because web pages are sometimes revised or removed). Such a document, formed by a user's selection of content from various web documents and collection of that content together in one place, is known as a web notebook. A web notebook may be made available to users other than its author, and thus may be indexed and searched by the users.